Obama’s new ‘AttackWatch.com’ website smells like political fear

By David McElroy · September 14, 2011

One of the first things you learn in politics is to never repeat the charges that your opponent makes about you. It’s counter-intuitive for most people, but after you’ve been in the business for awhile, you learn that if you defend yourself by explaining what your opponents are saying — and why they’re wrong — you end up reinforcing what the opponents are saying, even if they’re wrong.

Because of that, I’m shocked to see Barack Obama’s re-election campaign falling into one of the worst traps I’ve ever seen. The campaign has set up a website that it calls “AttackWatch.com.”

If you set up a site that talks about the lies your enemy is telling about you, all you’re doing is giving them — and their lies — publicity. I know it appeals to the rational side of the brain to respond, but I guarantee that it doesn’t work 98 times out of 100.

If your opponent is attacking you, the way to respond is to attack back, putting the opponent on the defensive. But if you’re a sitting U.S. president, you don’t do anything except sell yourself — without even talking about your opponents.

My point here isn’t to give advice to Obama. He can afford much higher-priced advice than I am. It’s simply to point out that people in the Obama camp are scared. I assume they’re looking at poll numbers and starting to get worried that he might be a one-term president.

I’m sure that the new AttackWatch site will be popular among Obama supporters. The people who love you are always happy with you go on the offensive to “set the record straight,” because they honestly believe it works. (Everyone has a cognitive bias for assuming that explaining things from his point of view will make others suddenly see the light.) But all it’s really going to do, in my opinion, is bring more attention to the charges that are being made. It’s a very bad idea.

The fact that Obama’s advisors are scared enough to do something such as this would give me hope if there were anybody on the Republican side who I thought would do a better job. I do think a Republican has a decent shot at winning next year, but I don’t have any hope that anyone with the right ideas is going to take Obama’s place.

The U.S. presidency is an odd case of musical chairs right now. No matter who’s sitting there when the collapse happens, that person isn’t going to be the one to blame alone. It’s been a bi-partisan mess for many decades. They all have reason to be scared about how history is going to view them.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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